The Metropolitan Police Department’s Life and Economic Affairs Division has referred the representative and employee of the investment consulting company “J-Will-X” to the prosecutor’s office, as well as the company itself, on suspicion of copyright infringement. The article was published on the front page of the Sankei Shimbun on May 31. According to the article, the two men are suspected of infringing copyright by copying articles from five newspapers and publishing companies, including the Sankei Shimbun, Jomo Shimbun, and The Factor, without permission. Our company is actually one of these five companies.
We received an explanation from the Metropolitan Police Department several months ago, and are currently in communication with the lawyer representing J-Will-X.
It appears that J-Will-X used services such as Nikkei Telecom, which our company provides articles for, to copy articles related to their work, and shared them with about 100 people, such as posting them on the intranet and circulating them by email.
This is a violation of copyright law, meaning it is a violation of the law, so we must deal with it strictly as a country governed by law. The important point to remember is that the article was used without permission, and if the article provider had given permission beforehand, it would not have become such a big deal.
Our company publishes articles as a business, so we cannot approve of free riding. On the other hand, from a journalistic perspective, we write articles with the aim of being shared as widely as possible, so we are actually happy when our articles are shared by many people.
In short, the question is how to balance business and journalism. I have been in the media industry for 30 years and have been involved with the Denkei Shimbun for over 20 years, but I still struggle to find the right balance. With the advancement of digital technology, the balance has become even more complicated, and it looks like we will continue to grope in the dark for a while.
As an aside, this year our company has been prone to getting into strange trouble. A few months ago, we had a lot of trouble with transportation-related issues. By the way, it seems that my luck this year is blocked in all directions. (Kitajima Kei)

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